


Two of Us

by Fiercelynormal



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27690401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiercelynormal/pseuds/Fiercelynormal
Summary: My father was the best man I've ever known.
Comments: 97
Kudos: 200





	Two of Us

**Author's Note:**

> I've been out of SPN fandom for years now, but that finale just brought back everything I loved about the show and I suddenly had the urge to write again. Who knew?! Unbeta'd trash. Title from the song by Louis Tomlinson.

_Now_

I gave him a hunter’s funeral. He was so thin and frail that moving his body by myself was easy. It shouldn’t have been a shock; I’ve been caring for him throughout this last difficult year of his illness but even then when the moment came I still had a hard time associating that wasted frame with the larger than life man who was my father.

I didn’t ask anyone to attend. He had plenty of people who would have come - would have been honored to have been there. Alex, Claire, Patience - I attended Jody and Donna’s funerals a few years back, and I know they all loved Dad; they would have come. My girlfriend, Sarah. Any of the wide assortment of hunters he helped over the years with supplies, rough field medic services, or acting as a reference check for alibis and the like. They liked him, were grateful to him. But I wanted to do this last thing for him alone.

It’s always been the two of us. Even though he left “the life” as he always called it, when he decided to raise me, he had gotten used to being alone. And though Dad was naturally friendly and empathetic, he never really let people in. He let me in though. He once said that finding me on his last hunt was the best thing that had happened to him since...well, he never did say since what, but I knew.

I never met my uncle, my namesake. He’d been dead for years by the time Dad found baby me on his last hunt. I saw pictures though; how could I not when they graced the walls and mantel of our home my entire life. I learned about him through stories Dad would tell me, through conversations I’d overhear with Donna and Jody, through throwaway comments that peppered Dad’s conversation. “Dean would have loved this,” Dad would say. Or, “Dean would have said that guy was a douchebag.” Even though I never met him, he was so real and present in our lives it was like he was always there.

I don’t know what it was like for my dad and his brother growing up. Dad tended to avoid conversations about his life before he started hunting with my uncle, though of course I know the bones of it. But I know it created a bond between them that made other relationships almost extraneous. I know they’d had friends, shared friends and friends of their own - even a real life angel and fuck was I jealous of that when I found out. But mostly they just had each other, and they were happy that way, he said.

In some ways my own relationship with Dad was the same. He didn’t tell me about the...unnatural things in the world until I was old enough to keep things to myself, but he raised me alone. Taught me how to camp, how to tie my shoes, how to throw a baseball, how to solve a differential calculus equation. He taught me to look for the good in people. He taught me other things - like how to kill a vampire, or a striga, or a hundred other unnatural creatures, but only in the abstract. “Just in case,” he’d say. He gave me my grandfather’s journal on my eighteenth birthday (along with a banged up Chevy Equinox and a trip to the tattoo parlour) to round out my education, but I could tell he hoped I’d never have to join the “family business” for real. I keep the journal in an old cedar box, now with Dad’s watch - originally that other Dean’s watch - that he wore my whole life. I’ll add to it, I’m sure, as I pack up the house and find little keepsakes of our life that I don’t want to let go of.

But as close as we always were, and as happy as I know he was in with our little family, with our home, I always knew there was a hole in Dad’s life. I don’t know if siblings can be soulmates (or if there even is such a thing) but if not they must have been the closest thing to it. Even Jody and Donna commented on it from time to time. And he’d get this faraway look in his eyes sometimes, and I knew he was thinking about that other Dean, and that his hurt at losing him never left him in all those years.

That look was in his eyes a lot this last year. Sometimes the meds would make him confused and I’m not sure exactly who he was seeing when he looked at me. Which Dean. I guess it doesn’t matter; I know he loved us both, and as long as he was happy in those moments, I didn’t mind.

My dad was the best man I’ve ever known. I’m still trying to adjust to not having him in my life. At least I have what most people don’t - not just belief, but the absolute _knowledge_ that there is an afterlife, and that Dad is up there in heaven right now, with his brother. That he’s complete and happy, and that I’ll see him again someday. It made letting him go so much easier.

— Dean Winchester

  



End file.
